“We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion—a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply.”
Edward R. Murrow, 1951
“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.”
Andrew Jackson, On the Second Bank of the United States
What Mr. Jackson failed to realize is that governments are generally instituted among men for the specific purpose of serving the selfish interests of the rich and powerful. Government is force, violence, and is funded by theft. Most of the founders of the united States were crony capitalists (well, called mercantilists at the time). Some of the worst were John Adams and Alexander Hamilton (and pretty much the entire group known as the Federalists).
Yup. But crony cap gives caps (to bust in intellectually sedentary asses) to, well, intellectually sedentary asses. It’s redundant, but i call them what they are: crony cartelists.
That Murrow quote is fantastic, it really captures the TBP zeitgeist well.
The Murrow quote makes it clear that the human condition doesn’t change much over time.